- Art in Flux (Tusen Takk Foundation)
Outside, spring gently nudged winter out of its way, while inside, the new version of my novel slipped the old version a mickey, rolled it up in a carpet, and dropped it off a dock on Lake Leelanau.
- Foundations (Deep South Magazine)
I figured my family’s history, while I fabricated that of another one, would go sit in the corner, keep its filthy mouth shut, and think about what it had done.
- Accidental Adulthood (Thought Catalog)
On a winter night in New York six years ago, two friends and I were in the back of a cab, heading from one bar to another, when our conversation was interrupted by a loud thump.
- Seduction Therapy (The Atlantic)
The truth is, I never considered my relationship with Clarice as it pertained to my past relationships, the similarities and the differences, the positives and the negatives, until I first met with Dr. Phillips roughly eight months after that night at the bar.
- Brooklyn, Borough of Snobs (New York Daily News)
What could have caused the residents of Brooklyn to remove the chips from their shoulders, ready to fling them at anyone who dared trespass into their borough?
- Why They Haven’t Occupied Mississippi (New York Daily News)
The part of me from New York understands the issue of Initiative 26; the part of me from Mississippi does not understand the issue of Occupy Wall Street.
- Sex Lives of the Saints (The Morning News)
In Lives of the Saints, set in New Orleans during the Reagan era, the narrator, Louise, hides her love for Claude Collier, my novelistic analog, beneath the guise of mere friendship.
- A Rifle Named Waylon (The Atlantic)
Something in my heart has always been recklessly attracted to people who are reckless with my heart.
- Wing Women of the Redneck Riviera (Thought Catalog)
If I didn’t understand or appreciate the female mindset enough to be friends with a woman, how could I ever hope to cajole, beg, or delude one into sleeping with me?
- Four’s a Crowd (Thought Catalog)
Across the bed, Tatum, who I had been dating for three months and for whom I was still uncertain about my feelings, looked stunningly beautiful. I could not take my eyes off her. That inability became a problem when, seconds later, she began to make out with the other girl.
My teachers considered it a harmless loss of baby fat. My parents shrugged it off as a symptom of puberty. As I crossed into double digits, however, people began to whisper. I appeared to be wasting away, the victim of some terminal Victorian disease, the poetic and tragic mystique of which pleased my future writer’s self.